—— ? ——

  Light.

  Bright, white, light.

  That was all that could be seen. Blank, formless, and searing white.

  For uncountable time that was the only aspect, the only feeling.

  There was nothing else. No sense of self. No sensation. Just a moment of time that marched forward. An inevitable fact that could not be denied.

  As it plodded forward, even the void began to fade.

  Was this the afterlife?

  The thought barely took hold.

  Or was it an impression?

  Impressions.

  Or words.

  Time?

  They tried to blink. They? Who were…. They?

  There was just the void, and nothing else. Why would they try to… blink?

  The void would not blink. It could not blink. It was only white and formless.

  They tried to turn.

  But nothing happened.

  Is my family here somewhere? The ones who have passed before me? Faded away, gone from the world.

  The outline of a figure started to form, each impression causing the lines to become more distinct.

  The wavered in the void, wispy and unformed, yet it continued to condense as each impression appeared and then locked into place.

  What’s next? Is everything over? Did… my plan not work?

  The figure began to shimmer and fade, the outline growing hazy. But the fledgling thought sparked again.

  My plan..

  There was still no sensation, but the outline solidified further.

  MY PLAN.

  A body formed, outlined against the white void.

  MY PLAN HAD TO HAVE WORKED.

  Features began to sharpen and form against the sensationless white.

  But… was there no sensation?

  Eyes formed on the figure's face, and they blinked.

  No sensation was a lie. There was at least one feeling. It was sinister. A wrongness that seemed to pull from the shadows and gripped the at the figure.

  As the figure continued to form, its eyes turned to its lower half. It watched as a small wispy piece drifted away from its body. The piece was sucked away. Their eyes followed the piece as it left the white and was pulled to… the shadows?

  Had the shadows always been there?

  As the wisp vanished into the shadows, the figure felt worse. A piece of them had been taken. Pulled into the dark and their connection to it cut. They could still feel it, but it felt as if it had become part of something horrible. A trap that it would never escape.

  Further condensing their form proved to be a monumental task. Despite latching onto their impressions, it felt like they would never fully form.

  Maybe it was better to let things fade.

  To fully descend into the embrace of the beyond.

  As to what would come next? They didn’t know. They began to fade again, their form converting into wisps again.

  “No.” An echo of a memory reverberated in the figure's mind.

  No?

  How dumb.

  You can’t just say no.

  That was… wasn’t fair. You couldn’t just face the facts and say no.

  Eyes snapped back into clarity, and the figure blinked. With each blink, their outline condensed further than it ever had.

  That’s right. That stupid moron. My plan. I can’t just fade away.

  Defiance against the inevitable truth of the world.

  The figure’s legs snapped into existence, then their torso.

  Why are there holes here? No. Those aren’t needed here.

  Holes in the figure's chest sealed, then vanished. Arms appeared, then their neck.

  Finally, their face fully formed. Her face formed.

  She blinked as her senses reappeared.

  Where the hell was she?!

  She held up her hands, her head turning to stare at them. They were still translucent, but with every moment they solidified.

  The slight blue tinge of her skin was almost visible.

  She was Kaelalin.

  And she wasn’t going to just fade into the abyss.

  Fuck.

  That.

  Memories returned with each moment, her recollection of the past months snapping into place one day at a time.

  She remembered her frozen home. Her sister. She remembered her work as a rune mage.

  Then she remembered that fateful day. The day everything froze and the existence was bombarded by windows of information.

  The returning memories picked up pace, each day a blip.

  Then she remembered the cold. The dark sludge that crawled through her body and stole the heat from her bones.

  That hellish shadow poison. The feeling as she watched a number fall. It was almost laughable for a number to have such significance

  11%... 10%...9%....

  She shuddered as she recalled the pain of those barbs bursting through her chest.

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  That had hurt to a level she couldn’t imagine before.

  Then the explosion, the feeling of someone’s arms stopping her fall, then stillness as they had both come to a stop.

  The rush of energy as she had dumped every stat to try and save herself.

  It was a whirlwind of emotions and physical feelings.

  Even then, the cold chill had stolen her life despite all of her efforts. In her last moments, her mind had latched onto a single, rash idea.

  The metal. A construct made to house someone’s soul.

  But how could she use it? Zerathis had used multiple arrays, magical devices, and more to transfer himself to the complicated housing.

  That’s when she remembered. The way that Zerathis had accomplished the impossible and ‘purified’ the metal.

  His secret to succeeding at a task that the brightest minds of his race had failed at?

  Cheating.

  Zerathis hadn’t truly purified all of the metal. Instead, he had isolated the hungering entity to one part of the creation. Locked it away in a section of the metal where it could never escape.

  If that ‘eight-ball’ as Simon called him, could do the impossible. Why couldn’t she?

  She didn’t need magical circles, devices, and constructs.

  No, what she needed was to use the nature of an entity that had never been stopped.

  Kaelalin didn’t have the tools or the time, so instead she had reached out. She had gripped the metal and driven her soul to it. Not to the array, but the caged hunger.

  The cage was built to stop it from escaping. Zerathis had shown her every detail, gone over all of his designs. He wanted her to be able to recreate it in an instant, incase it’s containment ever failed on his construct.

  Kaelalin had used that knowledge to barge her soul to the outer edges of the cage. But even then, she wasn’t able to enter. She wasn’t skilled enough in the use of soul magic to accomplish that feat.

  But like a fisher jiggling their bait, she had presented the smallest bit of her soul to the cage. She had reached out with her soul.

  As her body failed and the connection between it and her soul broke, something reached back.

  The hungering entity had struck.

  Kaelalin grinned.

  Her stupid ass plan had worked. It had pulled her in, ready to feast on its new bounty.

  But now she was awake.

  Awake and alone. Trapped in a prison meant to restrain the world's evil.

  To make matters worse, the little fucker was gnawing on her.

  She tried to turn to face it, reflexively moving her body. That didn’t work.

  She willed herself to turn to it.

  Now that actually worked. This place wasn’t just a void, a blank white slate. It was a prison.

  And the section she now stared towards was the shit corner.

  The searing white transformed into a pulsing hue. Like molten metal, filth, and vomit swirled into a disaster of a sensation.

  There it was, her new bestie.

  Kaelalin saw something that made her shudder. More god damned tendrils reached out from the corrupted section of the cage.

  She traced one of them from it. It snaked across the floor to her…

  She screamed.

  On her leg, the tendril curled, pulsing and disgusting. With a large pulse, she saw a blue translucent wisp being sucked away from her.

  Well, that’s where the gnawing feeling is coming from. She grimaced as she tried to pull away.

  “Great fucking plan, Kaelalin,” she chastised herself. “Shove your soul into a cage with a creature that is known to trap the souls of sentient beings. How the hell could that go wrong?”

  She focused on her leg. She needed to figure out how to shove this thing off.

  But how?

  Her mind ran through possibility after possibility.

  “A ha!” She exclaimed as a realization came to her.

  “That skill. I need it.” A mental image of Simon played through her mind, his body wrapped in golden light. Then the system noticed that Marden had shown Varnholt.

  “Thanks, Marden.” She spat sarcastically, then intoned. “Anima Control”

  Unsurprisingly. Nothing happened.

  Kaelalin groaned. Partially from it not working, but also because another wisp of her being was sucked away.

  “Come on. Come on. If that blockhead was able to gain the skill, so can I!”

  She focused on what she wanted the skill to do. What she needed it to do. She imagined the shape of her soul glowing, her leg lighting to a golden hue. How it would condense, grow, and repel.

  Minutes passed as she visualized what she believed the skill to be able to do. She held up her hands and stared at them.

  This world wasn’t real. Well, not in a true sense anyways.

  Who said her arm had to stay as an arm? It could be anything she wanted it to be.

  More minutes passed as her arm slowly started to flicker.

  Kaelalin grinned.

  “I’m not fucking dead yet, you bastard.” Her leg solidified into ice. “Get your sucking tendril the hell off me!”

  She yanked it away, her legs surface turning to the slickest material she could imagine. A slurping sound was heard as her leg pulled away.

  “Ha HA!”

  Her grin pulled at her mouth, triumphant.

  “What now, you dirty soul sucker?!”

  The entity pulsed, its tendrils reaching out, searching for her. Kaelalin pulled far away from it to the edges of the cage. It seemed it wasn’t able to reach far at all.

  “I’m going to assume that will change.” She shook her head. “But does it matter?”

  Small translucent motes shimmered off her every so often. Even without touching her, the aura of the beast seemed to be pulling parts of her towards it.

  Kaelalin felt tired from her efforts, but she forced herself to stay awake. There was no way that was normal. She didn’t have a body to feel tired. This was just her soul.

  “No. No. No!” a small voice came from behind her.

  She jumped back from the wall, her eyes wide.

  Where had… Wait. She knew that voice!

  She moved back to the wall, peering at it carefully. The searing white faded as she got closer, going translucent.

  A blurred image was visible, like she was looking through frosted glass.

  She pushed her ‘face’ closer, trying to focus on the blurred dark outlines. When her face contacted the wall, a scene snapped into clarity.

  “No! Kaelalin could have done it.” A muted Simon screamed. “Identify!”

  Pause. The scene grew clearer.

  “GOD DAMNIT NO! IDENTIFY”

  “IDENTIFY”

  “IDENTIFY! IDENTIFY! IDENTIFY!”

  Kaelalin’s heart broke as she watched the bloody, tear-soaked man scream at her cage.

  “Oh, Simon…” She whispered.

  He doubled over, sobbing.

  “I did do it, Simon.” She whispered again. “I did it!”

  Realization hit her, and her nonexistent stomach sank.

  He was casting identify on the metal, and he was sobbing his heart out.

  The fucking system wasn’t showing she was here.

  Her mind played back the meeting with the system arbiter in the Realm of the Forger.

  “God damnit,” she growled. “You have got to be kidding me.”

  *ding*

  “Oh, fuck off.”

  —- SYSTEM NOTICE—-

  > YOU HAVE DIED

  > Name: Kaelalin Zarvenna

  > Status: Alive –> Deceas… Error

  > Bodily functions ceased…. Soul still stable… Adjusting…

  ——————————

  Kaelalin held her breath.

  *Ding!*

  —- SYSTEM NOTICE—-

  > YOUR RACE HAS BEEN CHANGED

  > Previous: Frost-Kin

  > New: Ego Construct, Incomplete - ( Frost-kin - Deceased )

  > Description:

  >> You have died… yet your soul has not passed on. Through your ingenuity, your soul has survived intact.

  >> Yet, this effort comes at a cost, as your method involves an unknown entity. The creature hungers in its cage. A cage you willingly joined.

  >> You both share the same desire: To be free.

  >> As you both now occupy the same space, neither can benefit fully from integration until a victor is decided.

  >> Beware. Its greed knows no bounds, its desire sees no end.

  Harmony is offered. Growth is Earned. Limits are Unknown.

  Good luck.

  ——————————

  “HA!”

  Kaelalin pumped a fist.

  “That’s right, who’s the fucking best? Me. Kaelalin, take that, you frostbitten world!”

  She turned her attention back to the scene outside. Her excitement froze.

  “HEY! SIMON!?!!

  The world was dark. Packed snow crushed into the sides of the metal.

  It was all Kaelalin could see. The metal was buried in the snow outside.

  ... Had that man.... dropped her?!

  “OH my GOD.” She exhaled, her voice ringing out. “SIMON YOU MORON!”

  “IF you leave me in the fucking snow.” Her eyes light with frustration. “I SWEAR, I’m going to kick your ass!!”

  Kaelalin felt something tug at her. Her eyes snapped behind her, and she saw three motes pop off her and head towards the pulsating creature in the corner.

  “Nuh UH. You picked the wrong time to try something sneaky, you little asshole!” Her hands shifted into tendrils of her own. They snapped out towards the drifting translucent motes.

  “It. is. ON!”

  —— ? ——